THE BLANEY FAMILY - BIRMINGHAM TO CANADA

This blog is a place to share the stories of the Blaney family - their lives in Birmingham, England and across Canada. Hopefully I will make contact with other descendants along the way. Family names currently being researched are Blaney, Elcocks, Cheffins, Langley, Bellingham, Welch, Lewis and Barnes.

Monday, 26 June 2017

In 2012, I took a
course in setting up a blog site from the Ontario Genealogy Society. The
teacher insisted that if we created a blog site to share our family history,
cousins from far and wide would find us online and likely contact us.

I was skeptical but I was interested in learning more about
the internet and blogging in general so I took the course. Happily she was
right.

I started blogging here about my mother’s family shortly
thereafter and I am so pleased that a couple of young distant cousins contacted
me. That led me to getting to know their parents and grandparents who are my
first or second cousins. It even prompted two vacation trips to meet cousins in
British Columbia and England.

I have been writing about my mother’s mother Elizabeth
Blaney and her family in a more or less chronological manner and I have now reached the point in the
timeline where my mother Joan Welch met my father William Atkinson. It seems a
good idea to begin a separate blog site to tell the stories of my father’s
family.

I learned how to link the two blogs together so I can
refer readers back and forth as needed to continue the stories of both
families.

As always any additional information or feedback regarding
errors and omissions are always welcome.

Friday, 23 June 2017

One day in 1934 my mother Joan Welch went on a double date
with her brother Lewis and met the man she would marry.

William (Bill)
Atkinson was a friend of Lewis’ and they enjoyed a large group of friends who
went on many outings together including church social activities.

Bill, Lewis and friends

Bill & Joan with friends

Joan was seventeen years
old, tall at 5 ft. 7 in. and slender with dark hair and Bill was age twenty-two,
6 feet tall and thin with a shock of unruly red hair.

************

Bill was born April 25, 1912, in Sheffield, England, the
third son of Thomas Richard Atkinson (1875-1959) and Edith Hannah Morris
(1879-1973).

Thomas & Edith Atkinson in Sheffield, England 1928

Bill's father Thomas and older brother, Charles arrived in Canada aboard the S.S. Duchess of Richmond, landing at St. John, New Brunswick
on March 24th, 1929. Thomas was fifty-four years old and Charlie was
nineteen. They had $20.00 between them.

Charlie was a mill hand in England. He was headed for a
hostel in Montreal, his passage being paid by the Canadian Government to be a
farm labourer in Canada. Thomas bought his own ticket and was also shown as
coming as a farm labourer, headed for the Canadian Pacific Railway office in
Toronto.

The federal
government in the 19th and early 20th centuries left much of the responsibility
for immigration to the private sector, particularly the Canadian Pacific
Railway and other transportation companies which had an economic stake in
encouraging settlement of the country. With its own Department of Colonization
and Immigration the CPR promoted and assisted emigration to Canada from Europe
and the United States.

Ivy and Tommy Atkinson 1929

About seven months later Bill age seventeen, his sister Ivy (1914-1990)
age fifteen and their brother Tommy (1916-1944) age thirteen along with their
mother Edith followed.

Their passage on the S.S. Duchess of York was paid by
their mother at a special immigrant rate and her final destination was shown as
Toronto – “to join her husband” - who was living on Parliament Street in
Toronto. They landed at Quebec on October 17, 1929.

I had always thought that Dad had been an apprentice electrician
in England but the passenger list shows he was a moulder; in England this meant
a person who uses a mould to cast an object. He was listed as future farm
labourer, Ivy was shown as a domestic worker and Tommy as a scholar.

Like many others who came when Canada was advertising in Britain
for farmers, they all actually lived and worked in the city from the time of
their arrival.

After leaving the British army in 1934 the eldest Atkinson
son, John (Jack) Richard (1908-1967) followed them to Canada. He arrived on the
Duchess of Bedford landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, December 21. He was a mechanic in Sheffield and intended
to find work as a mechanic in Canada. He had paid his own passage and was shown
as joining his parents in Toronto, Ontario.

During the Depression the family were mostly employed and living in
Toronto. At times all the Atkinson men worked for Ferranti Electric in Toronto,
Thomas as a painter, Bill and Charlie as electricians and Jack as an assembler.

Ferranti Electric Canada was set up in 1912 to sell and distribute
their British designed electrical products. They became early pioneers in
Canadian electrical manufacturing as the Canadian Division of Ferranti’s global
manufacturing empire. This is where Bill began his career building large electrical
transformers.

Bill’s sister Ivy was working as a domestic for the Matheson family on
Ardargh Street in the High Park area of Toronto and Tommy was in school.

In 1937, Bill was working as an electrician and Joan was
working for Stanley Manufacturing, a metal printer, along with Lewis who was
working there a screen man. Screen printing is a stencil method of print making
in which a design is imposed on a screen with blank areas coated with an
impermeable substance. Ink is forced into the mesh openings and transferred to
the printing surface.

After knowing each other for about three years which
included a short engagement, Joan at age twenty married Bill age twenty-five at
St. Stephen’s United Church, the local family church regularly attended by the
Welch family.

It was a record hot day on September 4, 1937.

Bill Atkinson & Joan Welch
Sept.4, 1937

A Toronto newspaper clipping tells us the bride was given
away by her father while wearing a gown of pale turquoise blue taffeta with
pink accessories and a bouquet of pale pink and white flowers. Her attendant
was her girlfriend Molly Rusonick gowned in sapphire blue taffeta and carrying
white flowers.

Rev. J. A. Torrance officiated and presented the couple with
a bible. Unfortunately they did not use it to record any family history
information.

Joan’s brother Lewis
Welch was the best man and the ushers were Bill’s brother Tommy and friend
Arthur Barker. Lewis also sang during the signing of the register and as was
the custom of the day, the reception followed in the recreation room of the
church.

Joan at 593 Oakwood Ave.

The new Mr. & Mrs. Atkinson spent their honeymoon in
Niagara Falls; the honeymoon capital of North America.

Their first home was a cottage
at 593 Oakwood Avenue in west-end Toronto, not far from Bill’s family in Mount Dennis.

******************

These were happy times for Bill and Joan as they continued
to live and work in the west end of Toronto spending time with friends and
family in those pre-WWII years. Things were going well for other family members
too.

Bill’s sister Ivy had found work at the Kodak Company near
her home with her parents.

Edith, Joan, Thomas, Bill, Maude & Charlie

His brother Charles returned to Sheffield, England with his
wife Maude Beatrice Freeman in 1936 accompanied by their daughters, Betty age two
and step-daughter Joyce age twelve.

They did not return to Canada until 1949.

John (Jack) Atkinson

In 1937 brother Jack Atkinson enlisted in the Canadian Army.
He was an experienced soldier having previously served over seven years in the
British Army. The youngest brother, Tommy was working for William Arnold, as a
carpenter building summer cottages in the Sturgeon Lake, Ontario region.

Joan’s brother, Lewis and their sister Eileen were living
with their parents in an apartment on Coady Avenue in downtown Toronto. Father
Harry was a brass worker and Lewis was now a designer, at Stanley Manufacturing.
Eileen was a student, likely at nearby Riverdale Collegiate.

80% of the people of Toronto were of British origin and predominately
Anglican. Bess & Harry Welch were monarchists and followed the news back in
England. The abdication of Prince Edward for the love of Wallis Simpson and his
brother’s assumption of the crown in 1936 was big news.

The Canadian Royal Tour 1939

From May 17 to June 15, 1939, King George VI and his wife
Queen Elizabeth visited Canada, stopping in every Province and making a short
visit to the United States. Arriving in Toronto at 10:30 am, they brought pomp
and ceremony.

Hundreds of thousands, including WWI veterans, greeted them with
great excitement, joy and affection expressing their loyalty as the Royal
couple criss-crossed the city, at Riverdale Park and on the Exhibition grounds,
some waiting for hours in the previous rain.

They attended the 80th
running of the King’s Plate annual horse race, opened a major highway named The
Queen Elizabeth Way, leading from Toronto to Niagara Falls and dedicated the
Rainbow Bridge there at the US border. They also attended the Victoria Day (the
Queen’s Canadian Birthday) celebrations on Parliament Hill in Ottawa with a
trouping of the colours ceremony.

It was estimated that by the end of the day they had been
seen by two million excited spectators. After an exhausting nine hour Toronto visit
they were still smiling and waving from the back of the royal train as they
left on their travels to the west.

Joan's mother Bess was there to take photos of them.

Albert Blaney

At the time Bess’s brother Albert Blaney belonged to the
Legion of Frontiersmen, a version of Special Constables who were officially
affiliated with the R.C.M.P.

Founded in
1904 in Britain as a fraternal legion devoted to patriotic service to the British
Empire, their Canadian membership in 1939 was about 3500 and they were proud to
be on official duty at a number of places across Canada.

As a member Albert waspart of the honour guard at the Royal
Visit in 1939. The League was later
separated from the RCMP but small units still exist today.

This Canadian Royal visit was the first by a reigning
monarch and King George VI had come to rally support for the coming war. Three
months later, in support of Britain and France, Canada officially declared war on
September 10, 1939. With the war came jobs and the end of the Great
Depression.

Friday, 19 May 2017

Back in Toronto, Harry & Bess continued to work regularly
for most of the 1930s and their children grew into adults. The Toronto City Directories show that they had six addresses during that time, perhaps due to the need for space, the ups and owns of employment and finances or proximity to work or school.

Life was interesting in Toronto and there was plenty to do. There was dancing to the Big Bands at the Palais Royale Dance Hall, the Canadian National
Exhibition ran for two weeks at the end every summer and horse-racing was
available at Woodbine track. Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1932 and became the home of the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Team and in 1938
Superman was created by Toronto high school student John Shuster.

For sports fans there were professional hockey
and football teams. There were also the Athletic Grounds provided by the city that included bowling greens, football and baseball fields along with skating rinks, hockey rinks and toboggan hills.

Lewis Welch

In his teens, Lewis’s artistic talent was recognized and the
family scrimped so he could attend the Ontario Art College. Joan felt that his need for art supplies became more important than other things the
family might want to buy but she was forever proud of him and his talent.

During 1936 and 1937 some of his work was published in The Tangent, an annual OAC student publication of stories, poetry and art and in the 1937 edition he is shown as the production assistant.

The Tangent 1936

The Tangent 1937

By 1938 Lewis was contributing to the family home, an apartment over a drugstore, on Queen St. E at Jarvis St. He was working as an
artist for Stanley Manufacturing, a metal printer and fabricator established in
1917. He would go on to be a very successful commercial artist.

I am proud to own a watercolour landscape painting he gave me as a wedding present in 1961.

Bess

Church and music were important to the family. There were Church
services twice on Sundays with choir practice, bible study and youth group events during the week. At St. Stephen's United Church on Queen Street, Bess was a soloist while Joan and Lewis sang in the choir and they all participated in church social activities.

Lewis is seen here in a Rhodes Avenue United Church Choral Society production in 1938. He played the role of Tona in the musical comedy El Bandito.

There was certainly no laundry or other housework done on
Sunday. Shops were closed and in Toronto the Good, there was no fun to be had
except good clean fun at the beach with free streetcar rides for children from poor neighbourhoods.

The Eaton's Department Store covered their windows, park swings were chained up and there was no toboggan riding on Sunday. Every activity was subject
to the 1906 Lord’s Day Act and Sunday as a day of worship or rest was enforced. A Toronto referendum in 1950 allowed professional team sports to be
played on Sunday. Theatre performances, movie screenings, and
horse racing were not permitted until the 1960s.

Joan Welch

In the summer of 1932, at age 15, Joan left school to work. She
got her first job because her mother knew the owners of Chapman Brothers
Jewellery store at 261 Yonge Street near their home.

The Chapman family had a cottage at Lake Simcoe and they
hired Joan to be a mother’s helper for the summer. It was about two hours north
of Toronto in those days before today’s major highways. She lived there all
summer doing any chores that needed to be done from cooking breakfast for the family
and their many guests to picking up the mail.

One day she was travelling alone by canoe to pick up the
mail at a small store down the lake. While in the store she became anxious because the sky was becoming dark and the winds
were picking up. Lake Simcoe is still known for quickly arriving storms during
which strong winds create very high waves.

On the trip back to the cottage Joan
could not manage the canoe. She was being tossed about by the waves and she was
frightened, thinking she was going to capsize and be lost to the angry lake. Luckily the skipper of a motor boat heard her cries and took
her aboard his craft, taking her back to the cottage while towing her canoe
along behind. It was an experience she never forgot.

She told the story in her late eighties after being caught
out in a storm on a fishing boat with her son-in-law. The motor stalled in the pouring rain and
they had to be towed to shore by a neighbour.

At the end of that summer job Joan began working at light
manufacturing jobs. She worked on the assembly line of the Willard Chocolate Factory
and for a company making advertising buttons. She often told of the noise of
the button stamping machines and how people working every day in a candy
factory soon lose their appetite for candy.

Eileen Welch

While Joan was working and living at home she lamented the
fact that her younger sister Eileen who was a social butterfly who loved going
out dancing, often sneaking out in Joan’s clothes; putting them back soiled.

Joan also told a story of
Eileen hiding dirty dishes in the oven to avoid taking her turn washing them. Eileen was eight years younger and I am sure she had a few stories of her own to tell about her older siblings.

Harry Welch

Their father Harry also loved to dance and he won a few
prizes for ballroom dancing in Toronto including a set of silver apostle
spoons. Bess was a singer not a dancer but Harry had no difficulty finding
partners in their social circle.

In 1934 Toronto celebrated its 100th birthday with centennial activities and parades. On the eve of the centennial, services were held on the grounds of the CNE with 11,000 people attending. Bess was part of a 2500 person choir from various churches and they were all given a certificate to mark the occasion. That very large crowd singing God Save the King along with the 2500 voice choir must have been quite the sight and sound.

Saturday, 29 April 2017

While watching the news after lunch, on a cold grey March Friday
afternoon in Toronto my telephone sounded those three distinct rings that
indicate a long distance call. It is usually a call-centre marketing call but I
was delighted to find that it was my cousin Patricia calling from Vancouver.

We have developed a wonderful caring and sharing
relationship over the past couple of decades even though we are thousands of miles
apart. We love to capture and share our family history stories with each other
and pass them along to other family members.

Her most ambitious published work to date is “Chasing the Comet, A
Scottish-Canadian Life” which was published in 2002 and can be found and purchased online at Wilfrid
Laurier University Press www.wlupress.wlu.ca.

It is a biography of a family friend’s father, David Caldow. In the
preface Pat says “I fell in love with the story realizing it was not just David’s
story but a distinctly Canadian experience, a humorous adventure and a love
story – not only of a man and a woman but also a story of love for life itself.”

It was a cold and dreary day in Vancouver that day too. Pat
had been tidying up her home office and came across a poem she had written long
ago. She asked if I would like to hear it. Of course I did.

In a quiet voice she began to read her poem. It was
wonderful, I was moved to tears listening to her and speechless when she
finished. I have read it many times since and I love the sound and feel of it
as well as the stories found therein.

With Pat’s permission I am pleased to share it here for our extended families.

An Immigrant’s Child Asks “What if?”

What if my mother had stayed with the Scotsman who
beat her,

the husband and father of her first babies,

both of them “lost” before I came along, she’d told me
years later.

But, what if she’d had two who’d lived, instead of
those two who died?

Sunday, 19 March 2017

While the Great Depression began with the Stock Market crash
in the United States October 1929 it quickly spread throughout the world.

In the United Kingdom, it was referred to as the Great Slump.
Since the UK had not fully recovered from WWI, it seemed less severe than that
experienced in North America, which had seen boom times during the 1920s. Hardest
hit was the industrial northern area of the UK. World trade declined and the
demand for product exports decreased significantly. Mining and ship building
industries suffered and mass unemployment caused severe poverty.

The area around London and the Midlands were less affected.
While unemployment was initially high, by the mid to late 1930s the area was
quite prosperous. Home building around London was helped
along by a growing population in the area and low interest rates. Birmingham
was prospering because of their booming automotive industry and the number of cars
on the road doubled in the decade.

When Bess' parents, Harry & Jane Blaney returned to Birmingham with their children, Louise and Alfie in October 1930. they were taken in by their son Edwin (Ted) Harold Blaney at 12 Heathfield Road, in the King's Heath area.

Ted was born in Birmingham 17 August 1900. He served in the Royal Navy for two years from 15 June 1921, until 14 June 1923 and married Florence Sophia Whitehouse that year.

By 1930 they had two daughters, Florence (b. 1924) and Margaret (b. 1928) so an additional family of four made it a little crowded. Ted was a leather worker and likely had work during this time. It also came in handy fixing the family's shoes.

Their son John was born in March of 1932 and the 1939 Register shows Ted employed as a boiler attendant and Florence working part time as a shop assistant.

********

Bess' youngest brothers Albert (b. 4 September 1904) and Stanley (b. 16 January 1906) were both living in British Columbia, Canada.

Albert Blaney lived an interesting life. He came alone to Canada at the age of 17 in 1922
landing in Halifax, travelling by rail to Montreal, then on to British
Columbia. He had a job offer from the logging railroad that his uncle Michael
Murphy (husband of his mother’s sister, Clara Elcocks) worked for in Rock Bay,
B.C. It turned out that working “in the
bush” as he called it was filled with much hard work and danger, but he
loved it.

From 1925-1927 he and his
brother Stanley served in the Militia with the 42nd Black Watch
Highlanders in Montreal. They also worked in Montreal General Hospital along
with their sister Bess before returning to British Columbia.

By 1929 Albert had a floor laying business and he met Helen
(Nellie) Atkinson in the Vancouver boarding house where they both lived. She was also new
to Canada, arriving in June 1920, age 24, travelling alone to her
brother in Winnipeg. She worked there for a short time and then moved on to
Vancouver where the weather was not so severe.

They became close as he taught her about photography
including developing film. They were married January 12, 1929 and stayed happily together until her death at age 90.

Albert owned some property in Capilano area of North
Vancouver gifted to him by his Aunt Clara and Uncle Michael Murphy for his 21st birthday so they were able to live reasonably well during the Depression. The land
provided plenty of food and there were lots of salmon in the Capilano River.
Albert said “it looked as if you could
walk across the water on the salmon. One salmon could last us a week”.

He had numerous ways of creating work for himself and others
as well as sharing his land. He cleared
land, built houses and sold honey from his ten bee hives.

From 1934 until 1938
Albert belonged to the Legion of Frontiersmen a version of Special Constables
that was for a time affiliated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

*********

In 1930 Stanley Blaney, was living in North Vancouver with Margaret Kelly Thompson born
1902 in Belfast Ireland. Albert had sent passage for Stan to emigrate to Canada
in June of 1923 and the brothers worked and lived close to each other for many years.

Margaret left a troubled life in turbulent Northern Ireland
in 1920. She travelled across Canada alone to stay with an uncle in Vancouver
where life was not much happier.

A few years later, Margaret was working as a waitress when Stan rescued her from an abusive relationship. He was just 5ft 8in in height but he was
tough, strong and hardworking. Since he had no money, car or house, their first
home was a converted chicken coop at the back of Albert’s property. Like many
other couples in those times they could not afford to marry.

In 1933 they heard there were jobs in Toronto and set off on
their greatest adventure. Stories written by their daughter Patricia (Blaney) Koretchuk
tell us “Margaret disguised herself in
men’s clothes and together they hiked and hopped freight trains 3000 miles
across Canada”. She cut her hair very short, wore a vest and long pants, heavy
work boots and a peaked hat down over her eyebrows.” Many men travelled
this way at the time but it was unusual for a woman to do so. It was a
difficult and dangerous journey with many hardships along the way including hunger and evading
the railway police.

In Toronto, they lived with Bess and Harry and their three
young children for a short time but when it became clear that Margaret was pregnant
and unmarried, Bess asked them to leave. She could not afford to compromise her
reputation in the church.

Things were actually worse in the city where they
experienced hunger as well as unemployment. Stan worked at every odd job that
came along, they took in boarders and over time he found steady employment as a leather worker.

Their daughter Patricia was born in Toronto April 23, 1934, they
were married and the family stayed there for the next eleven years. They mended their relationship with Bess but their love for the west prevailed and they returned to
British Columbia on V.J. Day in 1945.

Thanks to Patricia (Blaney) Koretchuk for sharing her memories of Albert & Stan.

********

Bess's "big brother" was William ( Bill) Blaney born January 9, 1896 in Birmingham. Bill joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15 1/2 entering as a Boy II on a training ship in 1911 and didn't return to Birmingham to live.

In 1919 Bill married Rosetta (Rose) Amy (Wallis) Huxley whose first husband Henry John Huxley had died in France during WWI. Bill remained in the navy until the end of WWII and they lived many years in Feltham in Middlesex, about 150 miles from Birmingham.

In 1920 Bill received a medal for his part in the rescue
of a fellow seaman who could not swim. In September 1931 near the beginning of the Depression The Invergordon Mutiny occurred. It was a strike by thousands of sailors from about a dozen Royal Navy Warships docked
in Cromarty Firth Northern Scotland while participating in a naval exercise.

Rumours were swirling that wage cuts of up to 25% were coming in
order to reduce government spending. News of the strike spread upsetting the stock market and undermining the British Pound. It was settled by allowing those on lower
rates of pay to remain on the old rate, effectively cancelling the 25% pay cut
in favour of a universal 10% cut.

Depending on where they
were living and their occupations, the Blaneys suffered to different degrees during this difficult
time. Their courage and tenacity served them well.

Saturday, 11 February 2017

The silver age of the twenties was almost over when Harry, Bess
and their three children moved from Brantford to the big city.
Toronto had been booming for almost a decade, even the tourists were coming.

Known as a city of churches it was also a financial,
manufacturing and retailing centre. There was a building boom with fourteen skyscrapers
built between 1922 and 1928 and in June 1929 the sixteen million dollar Royal York Hotel was opened.

Traffic on Bay Street

Industry was growing, inflation and wages were up,
the good times had returned. There were jobs in the banks and insurance companies. Women
were now accepted as part of the workforce and 25% of them had work. Many people had a job and a car, so road congestion became a
problem in the bustling city and Driver Licenses were necessary.

41 Delaney Cr. Parkdale

The 1920s were also a time of “buy now, pay later” for cars,
appliances and homes which caused over expansion and over production subsequently resulting in
layoffs. Construction was slowing down too.

When he was not ailing, Harry was employed as a brass worker,
Lewis age 13 and Joan age 12 attended local public schools. After school Joan
prepared dinner and helped care for her four year old sister Eileen while Bess
worked a split shift cleaning early morning and late afternoon at one of the
large downtown banks. They were renting a small house in the working class Parkdale
area of Toronto.

The bubble burst when the Wall Street Stock Market crashed in October 1929. It was the beginning of the dirty thirties. It was the Depression
and it was hard times for most.

The Prairies suffered from extreme cold and blizzards,
followed by drought and grasshopper plagues resulting in dust storms and crop
failure. 100,000 people left to look for work in the cities.Unskilled single men suffered the most hardship during this time.

In Toronto
Since 1918: An Illustrated History, James Lemon provides some gruelling statistics. In 1931, 17% of
Toronto’s population was out of work and two years later, 30% were unemployed.
There was no unemployment insurance, no family allowance and no medicare.

Those working, saw wages drop by 60%, and no overtime. The federal government set up work camps for single
men doing construction work in the bush. Municipal jobs building sewers, water
mains and roads by hand, known as “moving dirt”, were created. Many men criss-crossed the country by hopping
on trains and sleeping outdoors while searching for work. Hobos lived in the Don Valley in Toronto.

Scott Mission - soup kitchen

More than 100,000 people were "on the dole". Public relief agencies provided some vouchers for food and
rent (no cash), and soup kitchens provided help. Evictions were common and people moved frequently as there was only help for the first month's rent. To qualify, applicants must have no relatives to help them,
be supporting a family, use no liquor, and have no telephone or car.

People coped as best they could. They helped each other, remade clothing, repaired
what they had, fed vagrants, took in boarders or shared
houses with family members. Large houses were broken up into rental units as 60%
were tenants. Young people remained at home longer and the number of marriages
fell along with the birthrate. Some lived well as goods were cheap; the value
of some products falling by up to 50%.

At one point Harry suffered a heart attack and could not work, causing Bess to sell her engagement ring to raise funds.

However for a number of years Harry was well and he was a skilled and experienced
brass worker. He made fittings for Standard Bronze Company, a large manufacturer
of lighting fixtures and Bess was working as a cleaner. Some of Harry's brass and copper works remain in the family.

The family were thrifty, for example Harry mended their shoes - they were making ends meet.

Generations who lived through those times carried the
lessons throughout their life. Bess and Joan practiced “waste not want not” and "try to keep
a little money for a rainy day”. They took care of their belongings, repairing them rather than replacing them
and they used electricity and heat judiciously for the rest of their lives.

****************

Shortly after Bess and Harry moved to Toronto, Bess’s family joined them, coming from Birmingham England. Bess's mother Martha Jane (Elcocks) Blaney was age 52, her father Harry Blaney age 53, her sister Louise age 14 and brother Alfred (Alfie) was age 9. They boarded the S.S. Athena on November 2, 1929 and arrived in Quebec nine days later.

Harry Blaney

Harry Blaney was a leather worker and the passenger list notes that the family’s destination was their daughter’s home in Toronto.

Martha Jane Blaney

It also shows that their fares were paid by the British Salvation Army. The charity made passage available to many poor residents of England to give them a fresh start in the colonies.

Taking the train from Quebec to Toronto, they were met at Union Station by Bess and Harry.

Bess’ sister Louise was just a year older than her son Lewis. They were all living together so Louise, Lewis and Joan quickly became good friends and they enjoyed their time together.

Lewis, Louise, Joan & Eileen

Lewis Joan & Louise

It was the Golden Age of Hollywood and you could forget your troubles with a 25 cent ticket to the movies. Radio was entertaining and widely available. There were sporting events, roller skating and swimming.

The family loved the beach, often taking the ferry to Hanlon’s Point on Toronto Island or the streetcar to the eastern beaches, with family and friends.

Life was not so easy for the parents. Bess and her mother had never been close and everyone living in the same house was likely challenging for all of them.

Unfortunately within a year of their arrival the Blaneys were forced to return to England.

Family lore has it that Jane, while working in a ladies wear shop, had taken something that did not belong to her. Regardless, the passenger list of the Andania shows Harry, Jane, Louise & Alfie listed under the category Deported. Their destination was shown as 12 Heathfield Road, Birmingham, the home of their son Ted Blaney and they arrived in Liverpool, England on October 19, 1930.

Bess was appalled and embarrassed to say the least and it was not spoken about even within the family. However Joan did tell me the story late in her life. Other than the passenger list, I have not yet been able to find an official record of the event.

As written in Whence They Came, Deportation from Canada 1900-1935 by Barbara Roberts, in Canada during the depression, any “new” immigrants (less than 5 years in Canada) not working or being supported by someone else, as well as troublemakers, were deported, often without trials. Between 1930 and 1935, thirty thousand people were deported from Canada. An article on the
Libraries and Archives Canada website mentions that never before or since have
deportations reached the same magnitude as in those years. Some Canadians, desperate
themselves, blamed foreigners for taking away their jobs and using relief
agency funds.

Harry and Jane returned to Birmingham penniless and moved in with their son Ted and his family where they stayed for a number of years. Recently a daughter of Ted’s told me that things did not go very well there either due to many conflicts over her Grandmother Jane’s behaviour.

Friday, 6 January 2017

With many thanks to a member of the Cheffins family I am able to correct a photo that I included in my post "On to Ontario", posted August 2015.

Sylvia Dyer had read the post and realized that the photo shown was not Bess's cousin Abbe Cheffins and his family. She sent me one of her family photos that helped me identify them correctly.

On reviewing Bess's photo album I was able to find the attached photo which Sylvia confirmed is Abbe (Albert Robert), Bunnie (Mona Beatrice Denovan) Cheffins and their son Ronald.

Unfortunately I have not been able to correctly identify the photo I used but hopefully in time I will.

Corrections and or additional family history information are always welcome and one of the purposes of creating this blog. Thanks again Sylvia.

Addendum:

I recently found a transcription of a letter my grandmother wrote
to her niece Margaret Everett, a daughter of her brother Ted Blaney in England. She was aged 91 at the time and in it she describes
in detail, her move from Montreal to Toronto. My mother Joan, confirmed the story a few years ago.

Happily Margaret's son Jon sent it on to me and I can include her words here.

“Then I got a day job with a well to do
family who came from England same time as we did & she could understand
what we were up against here.

Anyway after a short time she told me she
had wished she could go back to England but he would not go. She said her
brother was in Toronto with his wife & family and they would pay our way if
I would work for them in Toronto. She too was very good to work for.

So we went in a covered lorry. Harry sat with the driver and the chicks and I sat across the back on a couch and it poured cold rain. We had the water curtain across us. We tried to sing but it was too much.

[daughter] Joan was here for 2 weeks one time &
she said Mom, ‘remember we sat in back of the lorry and sang in the wind &
the rain.’ My, I was surprised she had remembered it so plainly, she has always
been a marvellous girl & a little mother to them [Lewis & Eileen] while I worked.”

Perhaps this explains the fact I could not find the
family in 1927 but I found them in Montreal in 1926, then in Brantford in 1928.

I think things may not have worked out in Toronto at first
and so they went to Brantford where they knew the Cheffins cousins. The 1929 city directory shows them in Toronto at 14
Delany Crescent, Parkdale. They remained in Toronto until 1945.

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About Me

Since we carry our ancestor’s genes, I believe that knowing the past helps us understand who we are and gives us an appreciation for those who went before us, their struggles, accomplishments, talents and human frailties.
I have now retired from business and am trying to catch up on researching my family's history and writing their stories.
I would welcome any further information that readers may care to share.
The Atkinson side of my family can be found at http://sheffieldtocanada.blogspot.ca/